The metal doors on the rooms banged every time someone opened or closed one which was pretty much all through the night! The music which was playing at 200 decibels in the bar around the corner till 3 a.m. didn’t help either. We loaded up our bikes and asked for the van which was blocking us in to be moved. They had lost the key! So they eventually pushed the van to one side and we had to unload our bikes in order to be able to squeeze past and load them up again on the other side. We still had about 90 kms of dirt roads to ride and we were already tired! I was keen to get to Buhoma before 5 p.m. so that I could collect my gorilla permit without which I would not be allowed to go on the trek tomorrow. Five hours of non-stop riding brought us to Buhoma just after 2 p.m. We pitched our tents at the community rest camp and wandered over to get my permit but the electricity was off so we had to come back later. So we went and found a place that actually sold coffee. It was expensive but worth it. We found that even though Uganda produces coffee and tea it was really difficult to buy a cup of coffee. Perhaps it is possible to buy it in cities like Kampala but almost in all the villages we stopped in we couldn’t find a place that sold coffee. We did find a “Coffee shop and restaurant” once but despite the name they too did not serve any coffee and they only had one item on the restaurant menu – pork. I went back an hour later when power had been restored and got my gorilla permit. Had a proper hot shower at the campsite chilled for the rest of the evening looking at the map and planning a rough route for week two.

89 km covered / 5 hours riding